Out of the Black Land (41 page)

‘It was on the general’s order that she lay with me to seal the contract, not with him. He is a kind and just man. He likes her. He would never keep her from her lover. Be comforted,’ he told me, kissing my mouth again.

I could not go to Amarna and see the lady Mutnodjme again, and now she could not come to me, since she was the wife of the general.

But I was comforted. Kheperren lay in my embrace. And I had a potsherd carved with a heart which told me that Mutnodjme still loved me, and it was as precious to me as any jewel.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Mutnodjme

The general returned. Everyone was pleased to see him, including me. Even the elegant cat Mou, lord of the household, descended from the high shelf in the kitchen on which he slept and condescended to wrap his body around the general’s feet. Horemheb tripped and I steadied him. He smiled at me.

‘Mistress of the House Lady Mutnodjme, I can see that you have been busy in my absence.’

He was right. I had. The apartments were scoured clean, everything that could be polished was polished, and I had bought Nubian blankets and felted carpets from Upper Egypt. I did not know the general’s taste, and when asked no one could tell me. So I had consulted my own.

I had not spent his gold like water. The rooms, like all rooms in the palace of Amarna, were decorated with friezes. The outer chamber had duck hunters all round the walls, delicate papyrus-reed craft floating over impossibly clear water teeming with fish. In that room I had blue fabrics. The inner rooms were lined with flying birds, a masterpiece, and all I had added to that was a tall lamp in the shape of an ibis, which reminded me of Ptah-hotep and Thoth god of wisdom, and furnishings in white and pale yellow.

Horemheb kissed me and sat down to have his sandals removed and his feet washed by Ipuy. This was his privilege and I would not think of taking it away from him. While the old soldier knelt down, I introduced my maidens and men. They all behaved well. I had even induced Kasa to wipe his nose.

‘Tell me,’ he said to Ii, who giggled. ‘Does the Mistress of the House treat you well?’

‘Yes, Master,’ she replied. ‘She makes us work hard, but she works hard herself. Your woman is a good woman, Master.’

‘My opinion also,’ he said gravely.

Ipuy dried his feet. Horemheb reached into a little bag and handed out a thin gold bracelet to each servant. They had not been expecting this and gathered around Horemheb, thanking him, until he waved an arm and bellowed, ‘Food and drink, especially drink! I must wash. Go and prepare a feast!’ and they scattered like birds.

‘Who is coming to the feast, lord?’ I asked. His broad face split with a large grin.

‘You shall see, Mistress. Four persons, apart from us.’

‘Where is Kheperren?’ I asked gently, hoping that I did not have to hear bad news. ‘Has something…’

‘No, he’s gone to see the scribe of Sais.’

My heart leapt up and the general patted me. ‘Yes, the scribe is well, the woman is well, all is very well, and I need a real wash. Ipuy, where is the old scoundrel? I need a scrub.’

Ipuy had slipped out to talk to the guard who had come with Horemheb and I did not want to get him into trouble by noticing this. So I said to Horemheb, ‘If you will allow me, Master, I have washed a lot of people in my time.’

‘Come along then,’ he strode into the washing place, stripping off his armoured shirt and his breechclout. I had already ordered well-jars of warmed water and I knew that Ankherhau had assembled the pumice and brushes and soft soap which the general favoured. I stripped also, because I considered that I was going to get very wet before the general was clean.

He stood under the falling water until he was soaked, and I began to groom General Horemheb as though he were a horse. He was almost as big as a horse. His thighs were as broad as my waist, I could not get both arms around him, and none of this girth was fat. Scrubbing at the stubborn marks which the shirt left on his shoulders and neck felt like scouring a leather-covered rock. He sat down on a stool so that I could reach his back, and I lathered the expanse of scarred skin and muscle. He was very different from my Ptah-hotep or the scribe Kheperren.

He was relaxing under my attentions, though I was scrubbing him with a hard bristled brush as vigorously as I would scrub a floor. I leaned his head into my breast so I could get at the back of his neck when his mouth found my nipple. I kept scrubbing, though I was becoming aroused. One strong arm went around my hips, moving me until I was straddling his lap. One hand caressed between my legs.

He was not going to force me, though he could have; he was the strongest man I had ever seen. A finger slid inside me. My body was reacting. After all, he was a soldier, a man who risked his life for Egypt. After all, I had been a long time without a man.

After all, he was my husband.

Feeling down to position the phallus correctly, I lowered myself onto a hard spike, carefully so as not to hurt the delicate tissue. Horemheb gasped and threw back his head, so that I could kiss him, the scarred face, the broad cheekbones, the hard mouth, which sucked at my lips. His phallus fitted inside me, just fitted. I had never been so filled and the sensation was strange. I sat awhile joined to him, savouring the feeling.

Then I began to move. I had seen the dancers of Nubia revolve their hips, and Meryt had told me that her success in lovemaking was entirely due to this skill. She had taught it to me. A sideways flick, a return, then a rotation like the upper grindstone. I had seen the effect this had on susceptible Egyptian audiences, who often had recourse to putting plates over their rising laps. This had always amused the dancers, and this is what all those men were thinking of. A woman in the Isis position, rising and falling like a rider.

This had advantages. If Horemheb had descended to lie on me, I might have been crushed flatter than a frieze. This way I could control the depth of the phallus and its angle and something that was itching for attention; some place in my vessel of Hathor which did not ordinarily react. I leaned away from my lover to contrive that this itch should be rubbed, and I began to gasp, almost to sob, as a flood of sensation washed over me.

He seized my buttocks in both hands and I clutched his neck and the mating grew strong. I was not going to hurt Horemheb no matter what I did, not without a weapon. The phallus twitched and he began to seed me, and at the same time I shoved myself down on the spike and wrapped my legs around his waist. He was deeper inside me than anyone had ever been. I shuddered. He held me tight.

‘Mistress,’ he said into my neck, as I disentangled myself and stood up on weak legs. ‘My Mistress of the House Mutnodjme. Lady, you honour me.’

‘Lord,’ I agreed. I kissed his mouth again and picked up my brush, which I had let fall in an excess of passion. We were both covered in lather. ‘We are certainly the cleanest lovers in the palace of Amarna,’ I commented, wiping soap off my belly.

‘It reflects the purity of my passion for you,’ he said, and I laughed and resumed scrubbing.

My household had exerted themselves and I was very pleased with them. When I had eventually emerged from the washing-place with a very clean general, Ipuy and Kasa offered to massage him with perfumed oils and Ankherhau had found his best cloth. She had, without being ordered, shaken out the folds and mended a little tear in one corner.

Takhar was laying out plates for the feast on the low long table which the general had ordered especially built for his house. He often had secret conferences and preferred to serve himself and his guests from a selection of dishes on the table rather than have servants filling cups and supplying food who were also attending to his secrets.

‘Willing hands have listening ears attached,’ he remarked, a truly strange image, but I saw what he meant. Ears did come along with the usual human package.

Apart from Mou, who did us the honour of attending on the preparations, approving of the cuisine and making off with a large piece of roasted beef, I did not know who was attending the feast. Wab had made garlands for seven, as the general had said that there would be six and it was always the custom to make one extra. They were very good garlands, collars of little flowers which I had not seen before put together with skill and I commended her. She put one finger in her mouth and wriggled with pleasure at my praise. I supposed that she would grow out of this, for she was a good child, mostly.

‘Mistress, I had to use small flowers, because the lotus are scarce this year.’

‘But it’s Khoiak, Wab, there should be unnumbered lotus in the pools.’

‘No, Mistress, hardly any. The season has been bad and the flood failed again and now there are few lotus. The farmers are eating the lotus roots and making bread of the seeds.’

I patted Wab and gave her a honeycake, but this was bad news. I saw no need to tell the general—he undoubtedly already knew—and surveyed the table.

There were stewed pigeons and roasted quail, a huge roasted fish, and a dish of garlic, leeks and onions cooked with beans. The general had always liked beans. Bukentef was standing guard over his jars of beer and wine. He gave a jug to Ii, who was to greet the guests with wine while Kasa and Wab draped them in flowers and anointed them with oil. I had bought a set of wine cups, light pottery decorated with cornflowers, and they stood ready on a tray.

General Horemheb, the picture of a cared-for man, clean, satisfied, massaged and clad in an indigo-printed cloth, threw himself down in his chair of state and accepted a cup, tasted, and grinned.

‘I like having a household,’ he announced. Wab trotted over and put a garland around his neck and he patted her on the buttocks as she did so. She giggled.

Then Nebnakht opened the main door and announced, ‘Widow-Queen the lady Tiye, Mistress of Egypt, Menna and Harmose Scribes of the Pharaoh, General Khaemdua Ruler of the Hermotybies.’

Wab and Kasa distributed garlands, Ii presented filled cups, and the guests came in and were seated around the long table.

‘Lady,’ I said a little breathlessly, ‘I am so glad to see you.’

I knelt next to the red-headed woman Mistress of Egypt, and she cupped a hand under my chin.

‘I know that you came every day of my captivity and tried to get in, Mutnodjme,’ she said softly. ‘I know that of all of my friends you never forgot me. I know that you have married the general and he never forgot me either. If it had not been for you, lady, I would still be shut in my rooms, well fed and well cared for but utterly unable to communicate with the outside world. I am so sorry about the scribe. I would have told you if I could, but my son chose that moment to lock me up. I hope that you forgive me.’

‘Lady, I have nothing to forgive,’ I said truthfully. ‘If you had not acted as you did, that scribe of my heart would be dead. I and the general agree very well.’

‘So I see,’ she commented, taking in the room, the servants, the feast and the terribly clean general in one comprehensive glance. ‘You have done well, Mistress of the House.’

I bowed. Ii poured wine for the Widow-Queen and she went on. ‘Tell me, how well do you know your servants?’

‘Not at all well, lady, they are almost all new except for the guards and the old man Ipuy. He is the only one I would trust, for he loves Horemheb like his own brother. In due course they may come to trust me, but it will take another season. But in any case they will be sent away as soon as the feast is laid out and our wants supplied. Horemheb always conducts his gatherings in this manner—it will cause no comment. Lady, when did they release you?’

‘Just now,’ said the Widow-Queen, curling a tress of grey-streaked red hair around one finger in the way I remembered.

‘Horemheb’s men came and relieved my guards. Then I was bidden to come to a feast. The times are very odd at the moment, so I saw nothing particularly strange about being taken out of prison to a feast. I put on my gown and here I am. I may, of course, be dreaming.’

I took up her hand and kissed it. ‘No, Lady of Egypt, you are not dreaming.’

The feast was laid, the wine flowing, and the servants were all dismissed in Horemheb’s usual fashion. Sitting around the table were my two tutors in the cuneiform script, Horemheb and me, the Mistress of the Two Lands and General Khaemdua.

I had heard of him. He was the ruler of the other division of the army. A very powerful person, with a reputation for courage and cold skill. He was not loved, as Horemheb was loved. He would not, for instance, have climbed down a cliff as Horemheb had, ahead of all the others, to show his soldiers that it could be done. But he had never lost an engagement in the whole time he had ruled his army, and he was very careful of his men. It was Khaemdua, however, who had been caught in a blazing fortress with no way out over the fire which the enemy had set about the walls. He had called for volunteers to die for Egypt, killed them swiftly and painlessly, and laid out their bodies across the coals. On this bridge they had walked to safety, eighty-three men and General Khaemdua last of all, treading the roasting bodies of their comrades.